The frequency with which I check my email is a good indicator of how much fun I'm having. Seldom does the world muster enough distraction to compel me to ignore my email and my RSS reader. Burningman does it handily. This week, so did SIGGRAPH.
I arrived, a guest of the Guerilla Studio/Cyber-Fashion Show, completely unprepared for the forthcoming sensory and intellectual onslaught. My first impression of the event was formed in the Guerilla Studio, a hodgepodge of fully equipped computers, laser scanners, rapid prototyping machines, motion capture systems, and printers. There was a "dot-matrix" printer that used sand as its ink and and the floor as its canvas.
But I was taken by the creativity that pervaded the room. Individuals and groups were engrossed in marvelous activities: constructing futuristic garb for the cyber-fashion show; operating a printer that prints on human fingernails; tweaking 3D models for instant "incarnation" in plastic, fine-tuning a dopper-effect computer simulation. People were sitting in front of computer monitors or slaving over soldering irons, but they were operating them as paintbrushes and pianos. What's more, this art defied any convention. There were so many people in this room helping to blur the lines between sound and light, dance and inverse kinematics, physical and digital.
In reflection, I find it strange that even as a technical person I find it easiest to employ metaphors to relate to how I felt when I encountered this environment. I'd like to think that its because I related to this event as an artist, then as a techie. But then again, when the digital world is your canvas, is there any difference? It was inspiring to see the mode of art that I want to create, and to feel I had something in common with its creators. It was also incredibly humbling to discover I've been working in a relative vacuum, ignorant of so many incredible creations and tools.
I toured the Emerging Technology gallery at SIGGRAPH, and my mind was summarily blown. I was fortunate to have Athena Demos accompany me and drag me out by the hand when my attention-span hit rock bottom and I began stumbling from installation to installation, wide-eyed, staring at everything but absorbing nothing. I compare it to the feeling of arriving on the playa for the first time, confronted with a world so obviously full of possibility yet too vast to comprehend at once.
I smoked a cigarette and bought a book on Beginning OpenGL. I have since managed to render an icosahedron, though I think it looks a little lopsided.
Over the course of the convention I experimented with graphics and electronics and sound generation. I practiced my solder-fu to help fix costumes, and I even strutted down the cyber-fashion show runway wearing a vest equipped with an illuminated indication of the Homeland Security Alert Level. I passed out resumes and business cards. I donned an LED-studded costume and spun electro-luminescent meteors in the lobby. I cursed at my virtual icosahedron, many coffee-fueled late-night hours in the making, and definitely still lopsided.
Most importantly, I got to interact with some amazing, skilled, creative people. They proved that applying geekery to art is not a waste. I am inspired to create as I've never been before, and I've discovered a global community of geeks with whom to collaborate and share.
And perhaps I'll even get a job out of this. I'll try to write a more practical SIGGRAPH wrapup, one less encumbered by metaphors or my early-morning compulsion to be "eloquent."
